I'm not sure about you, but driving 649 miles unexpectedly on a Sunday is sort of a strange way to wind down a holiday weekend, no?

Newsflash: Idaho rocks.

​Rewind. My husband and I flew to Boise, Idaho on New Years Eve (turns out Dec.31 at 6:30pm is a really great time to fly. . .no security line, no crowds in sight, we even boarded 20 minutes early because, why not?) to spend the holiday weekend with my parents. I wasn't expecting to visit the frozen tundra (I will be the last to admit it, but there's a 0.01% chance that my blood is starting to run thin with this wimpy season that my fellow Californians seem to call "winter"), but thankfully the temperature increased to double digits just in time for our New Years Day 5K race at 10am.

​Anyways, we spent all of Friday and Saturday in Boise, and Sunday our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:30pm for San Francisco. At 10:01am, I got a text and email from the airline saying that, guess what, your flight is cancelled but here's a very friendly link to help you find a new flight (it's the least they could do after hanging us out to dry, right?). Turns out there was only one other flight from Boise to SFO that day with 2 people ahead of us on the standby list. The next day (Monday) there were four flights but standby was all that was available. Dreading the thought of hanging around the airport having our hopes repeatedly dashed if the standby gods decided not to smile on us, my husband swooped in with a yet-to-be-suggested idea: what if we rent a car and just drive back to San Francisco?

Now, in a parallel universe, this idea would have been thwarted before the words exited his mouth. It's just not how I roll (or how my family rolls, for that matter). However, four days prior, my parents were en route to Boise themselves and got as far as Denver and then were told by the nice airline people that it would be days, literally days, until they could catch a flight to Boise. So. . . they drove. Twelve hours with an overnight stop in Wyoming. I questioned who these people were and what had they done with my parents during their entire ordeal.

​Anyways, that's exactly what we did: rented a car from the Boise airport, ​and 649 miles later we were back at the San Francisco airport picking up our own car from long-term parking. Strange twist of events, especially since I drove much of the cross-country length of Interstate 80 back in September and didn't intend to see it again so soon. But we made it and were only slightly less than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to be back at work again on Monday.

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Oh, and this photo has nothing to do with Idaho or roadtrips or cancelled flights, but last week we had an unexpected visitor who actually stayed inside the house for several hours and required much broom-waving and running up and down stairs and opening every exterior door in the house to coax it to return to the great outdoors. I suppose "bird on some books" has a similar look and ring to it as "birds on a wire."